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 A Limerick man’s dream of helping African villagers become self-sufficient received a boost this week as the Spring-Ford Rotary Club presented donations of $5211 to the Moringa Community, an initiative to teach machine woodworking skills and home preservation of fruits and vegetables.
The contribution, representing a gift from the Spring-Ford group and a grant of Rotary Foundation funds from Rotary District 7430, was presented to Jeff and Linda Lohr during the weekly Rotary luncheon, held this week at the Western Center for Technical Studies, Limerick.
As Spring-Ford Rotarian Janet Neff presented the club’s gift of $2000 to the Lohrs, Jeff remarked, “I’m touched that you did this.” The Lohrs had offered a program at a Rotary meeting in April 2009, and after hearing of the project, Spring-Ford Rotarians began pursuing a means of supporting it. The result was the club contribution plus a District Simplified Grant from The Rotary Foundation. These grants are awarded by Rotary districts using Foundation funds contributed by clubs in the district.
Presenting the District Simplified Grant of $3211, District Governor Mike McCarthy commented, “Their project is so much in line with what Rotary is all about.” The project embodies two of Rotary’s avenues of service – international and vocational. When the committee met to review grant applications, he said, “there was no question” that this one would be funded.
“We could not be more grateful,” Linda Lohr responded.
The Moringa project grew out of one man’s desire to learn better woodworking skills to share with his neighbors in the West African nation of Ghana. Lohr, who operates a woodworking shop in Limerick, offers courses which attract students from around the country. In 2007, he received an email from Abu Abdulai requesting an opportunity to learn machine-based woodworking.
According to the Lohrs, many Europeans retire to Ghana, a stable democracy, and there is a market for the wooden doors made by Abu and other men in his region. However, working entirely by hand, it takes two men three weeks to build one door. Abu hoped to learn a method to speed up the process to make it a more successful way of earning a living.
Eventually, Abu was able to join the Lohrs in their Limerick home, where he stayed for three months in early 2008. Initially, Jeff Lohr said, he expected to teach Abu to use his machines, and Abu would return to Ghana and purchase similar equipment. He soon learned that would not be an option, as the only power tools available in Ghana were a circular saw and a router.
Lohr determined they could build a complete woodshop with these two tools, and took Abu to Home Depot to find what other materials would be available in Ghana. He was amazed to learn that of all the resources readily available to Americans in Home Depot, the men of Ghana could only obtain particle board and bolts in their country. So using these limited materials, Lohr and Abu developed what the African fondly dubbed “Mr. Jeffrey’s Third World Machine Shop.”
After the woodshop was assembled, Abu was able to make a door in just 90 minutes, compared to the three weeks it would take by hand. To make the project complete, Lohr and Abu built a second machine shop using only the first, to ensure the project could continue to spread once it reached Ghana. The shop only costs $600 to make, Lohr said, and is achievable by a group of men working together.
As the Lohrs spent time with Abu, they learned of another struggle facing the villagers in Ghana. With only two seasons – wet and dry – Linda Lohr explained to the Rotary Club, “everything ripens at once and everything rots at once.” There is no way to preserve the food, and as a result many people go hungry. In fact, she said, the president of Ghana has reported that up to 60 percent of the produce grown in the country is lost to rot.
Linda realized a simple solution would be to teach the women to preserve the food using home canning methods, a process they had never even heard of. She taught Abu to can, and they made an instructional DVD which could be used to teach the village women how to preserve their food.
Abu returned to Ghana with his newfound knowledge and the equipment to assemble a machine shop. He traveled the countryside until he found a village chief willing to provide land for the project, and work began on a community center in Bako. Half of the building will be used as a machine shop, where men and boys can learn the trade, and the other half will be used to teach the women how to can and preserve their food.
Lohr showed the Rotary Club slides demonstrating the tremendous obstacles which had to be overcome as the villagers worked together to build the community center by hand. All ages contributed to the efforts, including children making gravel for the concrete for the building. In addition, until a bridge could be built, all materials had to be carried to the site on foot.
As the project in Bako gained momentum, more and more people from neighboring villages came to help. The reason for the snowballing interest is simple, according to the Lohrs. The project brings hope. That hope will be realized in just a few weeks as Lohr travels to Ghana for the grand opening of the Moringa Community school.
For more information about the project visit www.MoringaCommunity.org.
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